Liquid personal care compositions, such as shampoos, shower gels, liquid hand cleansers, liquid dental compositions, skin lotions and creams, hair colorants, facial cleansers, fluids intended for impregnation into or on wiping articles (e.g., baby wipes), laundry detergent, dish detergent, and other surfactant-based liquid compositions, are typically mass produced using batch processing operations. While viscosity of the compositions can be measured and adjusted in the large, fixed size, mixing tanks used in such batch processing systems, this approach does not provide optimal production requirements to meet the needs of facilities engaged in the production of numerous liquid compositions that share the same equipment to perform mixing operations.
Another drawback of conventional batch processing systems used in the production of liquid personal care compositions is the difficulty of cleaning the pipes and tanks to accommodate change-over to production of different personal care compositions. In order to reduce losses and avoid contamination of the next batch to be made, it is common to “pig” the feed lines or pipes leading to and/or from the batch tank and to wash out the batch tank. As this washout period can take up to 50% of the batch cycle time, a system that could significantly reduce changeover time would provide opportunities to increase production capacity and efficiency.
In addition to changeover time, significant quantities of unused components pigged through the lines during the changeover process are considered scrap and wasted when changeover occurs. Thus, a system that reduced such waste would be beneficial to the environment and would decrease cost of the finished product.